China as the sun sets (2010)

With a Horner Exchange meeting this afternoon, I have China on my mind. Below, from an afternoon of sight-seeing, near the end of the trip.

View the Album on Flickr.

Horner Exchange 2013 - Fall

foto from Horner blog

And they're off!  The Oregon delegates -- Angela Lee, Lori Wamsley, Pat French -- are adventuring in Fujian, China now.

I'm envious but excited for them. Follow their blog at:

http://2013horner.wordpress.com/ 

Horner Exchange 2013 - Spring

 

2013 Horner delegates

Our Horner Exchange delegates from China visited in April and May for an all too brief three weeks.  Thanks to a great team of volunteers, the visitors toured several different types of libraries, attended a large professional conference, and enjoyed the best Oregon has to offer in food, fun, and festivities.

For the second half of the exchange, the Oregon delegates will visit the Fujian Province in October.

More captions, again

A leadership speaker at a library conference once said, "Never apologize for being late. You're telling everybody in the room they are more important than you."

By the way, here are some more completed captions from my 2010 trip to China on the Horner Exchange:

Xiamen: http://www.flickr.com/photos/woogapdx/sets/72157625252635557/

So soon... Horner 2013

Welcome Horner 2013 applicants! Ready to walk through the door?

You'll find this blog is no longer solely about my trip to China on the Horner Exchange of 2010. Expanded to trips past and future. If you want to see my China posts, hop down to the bottom of this page and use the tag cloud.

For my other readers, it is completely unbelievable to me that the time has already come to choose the Oregon delegation and welcome our Chinese visitors again for the Horner Exchange in 2013. A welcome duty.

Also, I think this means I'm young enough to go again. Horner 2020?

More captions

Finished captions on the set of fotos from Wuyishan:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/woogapdx/sets/72157625365876056/with/5108554749/

Facts & figures

Just a quick update to let you know I have finally finished captions on one of the foto sets from China.

Hong Kong - Lantau

... Yeah, that's one of, uh ... six.

... And it took 10 months.

Hopefully now I'm in a groove, they'll happen more quickly!

Home

Home. And well into autumn, chilled rain and fallen yellow leaves. A few holiday lights already shining at night.

The China trip is over.  But in some ways it never will be.  As I organize my fotos and notes, I will continue to post about the trip, and through the years this trip will reverberate through all others, just as my previous library-related trips to Nigeria and Bulgaria found their place in this one.

Was it amazing? Yes! Was it exhausting? Yes! Will I do it again? Every chance I get.

Thanks for reading!

Tulou Round Houses

Horner Blog post about Tulou: http://horner2010.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/the-amazing-fujian-tulou/

Happy Halloween

Halloween so far in China has consisted of one department store display, accompanied by a Chimpunks-esque (with schoolgirl voices) rendition of The Monster Mash piped through the PA system. And two little kids in costumes. Though maybe those two kids just like to play dress up. Hard to tell.

The new money interest in all things American hasn't quite embraced Halloween, likely because Chinese culture does not make light of the dead, believing that unnecessary discussion of the topic might invite death to visit.

So, while my friends are carving pumpkins, I am eating them stuffed with mushrooms and pork neck.

Gulangyu - Island without cars

Gulangyu Island -- although I'm guessing some part of that word already means "island" -- lies such a short distance off the coast of Xiamen that it takes longer for the ferry to load & unload than it does to cross the water.  Once there, you will immediately notice the lack of cars, though pedestrians should still beware of motorized bikes and the army of bare-chested men carrying goods around the island in carts.

Once the preferred location for foreign embassies, the island retains a European feel but there are many Asian-style gardens, and temples. There are also a lot of pianos, from which the island derives the nickname Piano Island. I would have called it Stair Island.

We also had an opportunity to tour the Sun Yat-sen Library, and visit with staff who hosted us with cold tea (unusual in China but perfect on a particularly hot, humid day) and yummy Xiamen sweet cakes from the island's best bakery.

Trash

During a visit to one library we were shown several rooms full of books that had been donated by American libraries. I was going to say "well-meaning" but deleted it. Going for the jugular instead.

I was embarrassed by what I saw. What a load of crap. Moldy books, dime-store romances falling apart, incomplete Worldbook sets from 1982, a coffee-stained Commodore 64 manual etc etc.

Are you kidding me? What consummate arrogance! That we think our trash would be someone else's treasure.

"Oh, they're just learning English so it doesn't matter."

It matters.

/end rant

Brandon jumping over the wall

So, the food. The food, the food, the food. It's a never-ending banquet of one delicious dish after another. Our hosts are making sure we have the best impression of Chinese cuisine and hospitality.

bamboo shoots, sauteed

Yeah, yeah, there was some frog soup and some turtle feet and something bearing a strong resemblance to the visage of a certain carrot-eating fuzzy friend, buck teeth and all staring at me from my plate.... but mostly it's fresh vegetables, delectable meats, and an amazing array of seafood. All local, and much of it organic. Even something as seemingly simple as broth knocks me out.

crispy duck skin

There is one local specialty we have yet to try -- "Buddha Jumping Over The Wall". The story goes that the Buddha was walking along, and smelled something so wonderful and enticing, that he lept over a wall to find it. We asked, What was in this dish?

Every delicious thing. Every one.

Tea age

Wuyishan is famous for its oolong tea, reported to prevent cancer, lower blood pressure, and at the very least make a nice cuppa. Government officials are currently petitioning UNESCO to recognize tea as the third heritage in Wuyishan's designation.

Tea here is about more than a beverage, more even than the rituals (everyday and formal) around sharing that beverage. Tea is spirit, is life, is love.

A stone marking the path of wisdom reads "Spirit of Tea" so that you may walk the path with the spirit of tea.

The tea master and owner of the Liang Xiu tea factory demonstrates an oolong tea ritual.

Mr. Yang, the director of the Wuyishan library, shares tea from his own collection (like a wine cellar) with us.

They say, "May you reach the tea age." The Chinese character for tea includes strokes that resemble numbers adding up to 108. May you live so many years, with spirit, life, and love.

River of Nine Bends

While our hosts attended meetings of their library association, we were treated to a day of sight-seeing. The highlight was an extensive tour of the Wuyishan State Nature Reserve, including a 2-hr bamboo raft ride down the River of Nine Bends. I counted more than that.

The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site, with a coveted double heritage designation, meaning that it meets two sets of criteria, for natural wonder and cultural heritage.

More fotos on Flickr...

Horner Exchange blog

13 weeks til departure. 13. Pause for a moment and think about how fast one week flies by.

After the lull -- that time before a trip where it's too late to do anything that requires long-term preparation (I think I'll lose 40lbs and become fluent in 2 dialects), but it's too early to begin doing all the little stuff (the black bag with the red details, hmm, or the red bag with the black details??) -- we are beginning to gear up.

First, we've created an official blog for the Horner Exchange 2010 (this here mercatorial blog is my personal travel blog and will cover old trips and new adventures too).

http://horner2010.wordpress.com/

Second, ... well, my half-page To Do list turned into 4 pages. Our group had a nice lunch meeting yesterday where we compared notes, made plans, and reviewed information regarding the presentations we've been asked to make. My topics are RFID, and the management of electronic resources.

Third, I have begun the preliminary packing list. My light packing foo is legendary, but could not be possible without the packing list, the clothes matrix, and several other mystical logistical charts and forms. I'll post more about that soon.

Or, maybe I won't. A girl has to have some secrets.

....

**Update: the final packing list

Midnight train

Our guests leave tonight -- tomorrow really, on some crazy early morning flight that makes me fall down just to think about it. Their time with us was all too brief. But, as I said with great joy at the farewell banquet last night, "In October!"

I'll see my friends again in October!

Sleepless in Seattle

After touring four libraries in two days, we devoted Saturday to sight-seeing. The cold & windy weather was a hindrance, but we bundled up as best we could and stopped for tea/coffee every hour. Ok, ok, *I* stopped for coffee every hour*.

High-lights of the day were:

• Riding the monorail 
• "Duck Tour" - tour bus becomes tour boat
• Walking tours of Seattle - everything is a story, adventure through new eyes
• Hand-shaved noodle dinner at Shanghai Garden

What I enjoyed most was explaining all the different flowers and vegetables at Pike Place Market. It was fun to figure out how to explain rhubarb or radicchio in a few simple words, and as a gardener I could talk endlessly about flowers. Our guests enjoyed every single bloom, as did I.

*Mark my words, this will come back to haunt me. Our guests, having observed my coffee-drinking habits, will no doubt attempt to accommodate me in China in October. I foresee many pots of percolation. Really, I like tea, I really do!  :)

From Friday

So much happened today, I don't know where to begin. If only I could generate a tag cloud from my brain.

The morning drive to Issaquah was uneventful. ;)  Misty forests and snow-capped mountains lined the way to King County's sort center -- a warehouse-size automated sorting facility. It was a great tour, packed with interesting and useful information. Speaking well in a translation situation is a skill few possess, much less master. Tour leaders Tony and Steve are rock stars!

Sunshine appeared for our afternoon at the beautiful University of Washington campus. A thorough tour of the East Asian Library was conducted by the director, gracious at our sudden appearance -- our emails had been thwarted by spam gnomes. After exploring the main library, we wandered around the campus, where everyone was friendly and every tree was blooming.

Then we ate pizza.

Then it snowed

It was Bad Luck Morning.  Enterprise was late and confused with the rental, 2 miles into Washington State I got pulled over for a speeding ticket -- my first and only in 23 years of driving -- and at milepost 54, at the rest stop, the plastic fob for the minivan stopped working (dead battery) with *everything* locked in the van.

Then it began to snow.

Actually, everything turned out fine and we laughed a lot about all the "bad luck". We ate bananas and candy for lunch, but we made our 1:30 appointment at Seattle Public Library. Staff gave us a full tour with many behind-the-scenes views.

Besides the dramatic architecture and intriguing color choices, our guests were most interested in the public access computers, the virtual services, and the auto-sort machinery.

p.s.  So, not everything was in the van. JW's trusty iPhone was in his pocket. Eventually we got through to the Enterprise help line who explained the plastic fob breaks apart to reveal an emergency key. Good to know. Destroying the fob would not have occurred to me.